ascriptive (adj.)

A term used in GRAMMATICAL analysis to refer to a SENTENCE of the type The cat is angry, where there is an attributive identity between the pre- and post-verbal ELEMENTS, but no permutability (unlike the otherwise similar EQUATIVE sentence – cf. *Angry is the cat, but Freda is the leader/The leader is Freda). Sentences of the type Freda is a doctor are also sometimes called ascriptive, but are more problematic to analyze.